Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Guest Post: James Felton Keith On Homophobia & Discrimination in The Workplace

I stumbled upon a story by a good friend of mine that I met earlier this year at Netroots Nation in Phoenix, AZ. James openly shared his experience about how he was terminated from his position in the City of Detroit after appearing in a gay pride parade. One of the odd things I always point out is that folk like to make attempt at pulling folk's Black card when they identify as LGBT and clump us in with being White unfairly.

My name is James Felton Keith. I’m from Detroit Michigan. I moved back home in 2014 to work for the newly elected mayor of Detroit. A few days before I was supposed to start work on a Monday I was asked to come in on Friday to kind of get an ID badge and meet some of the team and get a feel for the office that I would be working in.

The first person I met was this fairly tall brown-skinned woman with shiny gray hair. It was like platinum. And she had the sweetest up-do. It looked kind of like a few of my aunts, kind of like my grandmother’s hair. She’s just cool. She was excited that I was there because at this time it was the first white mayor that Detroit had since 1974 and they were happy for as many black staff to come back or talent to come back into the city.

I was sitting, getting ready to take my picture for my badge. This is early in the morning, this is about thirty minutes to an hour after I first met my new auntie. These two white gay guys came into the office to get their badges. And she introduced me to them, it was very cordial, very professional.

The two guys leave, they leave the room. She nudges me and says, “You know, these white gay guys are coming to take all our jobs....CONTINUE READING